OKe 

AIMS  and  CLAIMS  of  GERMANY 

Bj)  DAVID  KINLEY 


PUBLISHED  BY  THE 

COLLEGE  OF  AGRICULTURE 
FEBRUARY,  iq.8 


The  following  address  was  delivered  by  Dr.  David  Kinley, 
Vice-President  of  the  University  of  Illinois,  upon  the  occa- 
sion of  the  War  Conference  called  at  the  University  hy  the 
State  Council  of  Defense,  the  Corn  Growers'  and  Stockmen's 
Convention,  and  the  College  of  Agriculture,  for  the  purpose  of 
discussing  the  relations  of  the  farmer  to  the  war  and  arrang- 
ing a  program  of  production  to  he  recommended  to  the  state. 

January  31,  1918 


THE  AIMS  AND  CLAIMS  OF  GERMANY 

By  DAVID  KINIiEY 

Three  times  since  western  civilization  was  established  has 
it  been  in  danger  of  overthrow  and  its  light  in  danger  of  being 
blotted  out  under  the  attacks  of  more  barbaric  social  orders. 
The  first  was  by  the  invasion  of  the  Huns  who,  in  the  fourth 
century  after  Christ,  appeared  on  the  eastern  borders  of 
Europe  and  drove  the  inhabitants  in  thousands  across  the 
Danube.  Pushing  westwards  they  later  crossed  the  Rhine.  All 
that  had  been  accomplished  by  Roman  civilization  in  the  west 
was  endangered ;  but,  in  the  providence  of  God,  the  embattled 
armies  of  the  Goths  and  Romans  combined,  on  the  plains  of 
Chalons  in  France, overthrew  the  Hunnish  army  of  700,000  and 
turned  back  the  deluge  of  barbarism.  The  second  great  crisis  in 
the  life  of  that  civilization  of  which  we  are  the  heirs  occurred 
when  the  Saracens,  after  a  wonderful  career  of  victory,  estab- 
lished the  banner  of  Mohammedanism  through  all  Western 
Asia  and  Northern  Africa  and  finally  carried  it  across  the 
Straits  of  Gibraltar  with  the  avowed  purpose  that  the  Cres- 
cent which  they  bore  was  to  float  over  a  Universal  Empire 
built  upon  the  ruins  of  Christendom.  "The  dream  of  Mithri- 
dates  and  of  Caesar  was  to  be  realized  in  the  actual  achieve- 
ments of  the  lieutenants  of  the  Caliphs.  The  Saracen  chief 
now  upon  the  soil  of  Gaul  was  to  subjugate  the  Franks  and 
their  confederates,  cross  the  Rhine  and  crush  the  tribes  beyond 
that  stream,  and  then  follow  down  the  course  of  the  Danube 
to  its  mouth.  Upon  the  shores  of  the  Hellespont  the  bands 
of  the  Faithful  were  to  join  hands  and  together  give  thanks 
to  Allah  for  the  conquest  of  the  World."  But  in  732  A.  D.  the 
heirs  of  the  civilization  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  defenders 
of  progress  and  of  Christianity,  met  the  Moslems  on  the  battle- 
field of  Tours  and,  after  a  seven  days'  terrific  conflict,  delivered 
the  civilization  of  Europe  from  a  danger  which  had  not  threat- 
ened it  since  the  invasion  of  Attila  and  his  Huns. 


Today  a  plan  of  conquest  for  the  domination  of  Europe,  as 
the  first  step  towards  the  domination  of  the  world,  very  similar 
to  that  of  the  Saracens,  has  endangered  once  more  the  progress 
of  centuries  of  civilization.  The  ultimate  aim  of  the  German 
Empire  in  the  present  war  is  no  less  the  conquest  of  the  world 
than  was  the  ultimate  aim  of  the  Saracens.  In  the  intervals 
between  these  great  crises  men  and  nations  have  fought  for 
various  causes.  They  have  warred  for  creeds,  for  commerce, 
for  land,  for  prestige,  and  for  no  reason  at  all  except  the  bid- 
ding of  princes  and  kings;  but  never  before  in  the  history  of 
the  modern  world  has  any  nation,  any  people,  any  govern- 
ment, deliberately  set  about  the  destruction  of  their  fellow 
peoples,  fellow  nations,  fellow  governments,  for  the  purpose 
of  crushing  out  their  separate  national  existences,  on  the 
theory  that  all  people  but  themselves  were  inferior  races  de- 
serving only  extinction  or  complete  subordination.  That  this  is 
the  purpose  and  spirit  of  the  German  nation  as  avowed  by  its 
Government  and  its  leaders  in  literature,  education  and  public 
life,  we  find  abundant  evidence  from  their  own  testimony,  to 
which  I  shall  shortly  advert.  But  before  doing  so  it  will  help 
us  to  inquire  somewhat  into  the  character  and  growth  of  a 
government  which,  in  the  twentieth  century,  could  precipitate 
upon  the  world  so  great  a  danger  and  avow  itself  an  agent  of 
Almighty  God  to  destroy  all  that  other  peoples  have  accom- 
plished and  other  civilizations  have  achieved. 

For  centuries  the  land  that  is  now  Germany  had  been  torn 
asunder  by  constant  dissensions  and  wars  among  the  princes 
and  small  groups  of  people  which  formed  the  various  duchies 
and  kingdoms  that  made  up  the  so-called  Holy  Roman  Empire 
after  imperial  Rome  had  lost  her  grip  upon  the  rest  of  Europe. 
Through  generations  there  existed  a  longing  among  these 
peoples,  frequently  expressed  in  their  literature,  for  a  combi- 
nation or  union  into  one  great  country.  The  unity  of  Germany 
was  a  dream  for  the  realization  of  which  every  patriotic  Ger- 
man worked  and  prayed.  But  rivalries  and  disputes,  due  to 
one  cause  and  another,  delayed  the  realization  of  the  dream 
until  the  middle  of  the  19th  century.  For  a  hundred  years  or 
more  the  military  power  of  Prussia,  the  most  powerful  of  the 


separate  German  states,  had  been  growing  and  it  was  with 
this  as  a  tool  that  the  project  was  finally  accomplished.  After 
Bismarck  became  prime  minister  of  Prussia  in  1862  a  definite 
policy  of  militarizing  the  whole  Prussian  nation  was  adopted 
and  thereby  an  army  created  which,  when  the  time  came, 
would  be  effective  for  the  purposes  of  Bismarck  and  his  mas- 
ter, King  William.  Cynical  and  unscrupulous,  recognizing 
no  law  nor  right  of  God  or  man  that  stood  in  the  way  of  his 
purposes,  using  cajolery,  treachery  or  force  as  suited  the  occa- 
sion, Bismarck,  first  appealing  to  the  ambitions  of  Austria, 
made  war  on  Denmark  and  took  from  her  the  provinces  of 
Schleswig-Holstein  which  Germany  has  retained  ever  since. 
Then  he  quarrelled  with  Austria  over  the  spoils,  made  war 
upon  his  late  ally,  and  inflicted  upon  her  a  humiliating  defeat 
which  deprived  her  of  all  influence  over  the  German  states 
and  left  Prussia  their  acknowledged  leader.  Four  years  later, 
in  1870,  he  struck  at  France  and  took  from  her  the  two  prov- 
inces of  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  together  with  an  indemnity  of 
about  one  billion  dollars  with  v/hich  to  strengthen  and  improve 
the  German  military  machine.  Aside  from  aversion  to  the 
methods,  or  some  of  the  methods,  employed  by  Bismarck  to 
accomplish  his  purposes,  the  civilized  world  at  large  sympa- 
thized with  the  German  people  in  their  desire  for  national 
unity.  No  one  appreciated  the  deep  laid  plan  df  the  master- 
hand  of  blood  and  iron  and  his  coadjutors  whereby  these 
preliminary  conquests  and  this  accomplished  national  unity 
were  to  be  made  but  stepping-stones  to  larger  conquests  and 
wider  domination. 

The  thirty  years  which  succeeded  the  Franco-Prussian  war 
were  utilized  to  develop  the  military  system  which  made  Ger- 
many the  foremost  military  power  in  the  world.  Meantime, 
the  Government  of  the  Empire  set  about  devising  conditions 
of  social  and  economic  life  which  would  remove  internal  agita- 
tion and  develop  the  Empire  industrially  and  commercially. 
The  progress  of  Germany  became  the  wonder  of  the  world. 
In  industry  and  trade,  in  literature  and  education,  in  military 
growth  and  civil  administration  she  assumed  to  take  the  place 
of  leadership  and  was  acknowledged  as  leader  not  only  in  these 


matters,  not  only  among  the  peoples  of  Europe,  who  feared 
to  cross  her  will,  but  by  thousands  of  our  own  people  who, 
too  busy  to  look  below  the  surface,  or  too  shallow  in  their 
appreciation  of  German  political  philosophy  and  its  goal, 
preached  and  taught  for  years  the  doctrines  of  German  supe- 
riority and  German  efficiency. 

American  students  and  American  university  professors 
went  for  higher  education  to  Germany,  and  without  realizing 
the  trend  of  the  philosophical  ideas  which  underlay  the  educa- 
tion they  received,  came  back  in  scores  and  hundreds  to  spread 
the  story  of  German  efficiency  and  intellectual  progress.  Some 
of  them  were  slavish  followers  of  the  doctrines  of  their  teach- 
ers, and  have  been  unable  ever  to  rid  themselves  of  the  impe- 
rialistic point  of  view  which  they  acquired  at  these  German 
seats  of  learning.  They  have  unconsciously  spread  doctrines 
that  are  pernicious  in  a  democracy.  They  have  urged  the 
adoption  of  German  methods,  standards  and  plans,  apparently 
without  any  consciousness  of  the  fact  that  these  methods  and 
plans  were  adopted  in  Germany  for  the  sake  of  furthering 
certain  purposes  which  have  no  place  in  the  life  of  a  demo- 
cratic people.  They  have  become  in  many  cases  apologists 
for  things  German,  even  some  of  the  worst  things  that  have 
disgraced  humanity  in  the  present  war.  They  have  become 
centers  of  influence  for  the  promotion  of  German  Kultur 
in  university  classrooms,  in  the  school  room  and  in  the  press. 
They  have  gone  so  far  in  some  cases  as  to  be,  whether  pur- 
posely or  not,  agents  of  the  propaganda  of  German  Kultur. 
Some  of  them  have  made  themselves  ridiculous  by  publishing 
works  trying  to  establish  the  doctrine  that  everything  of  im- 
portance in  the  United  States  had  a  German  origin ;  that  some 
of  the  greatest  writers  in  English  literature  and  philosophy 
were  indebted  exclusively  to  Germans  for  their  inspiration  and 
their  principal  doctrines ;  that,  in  short,  the  roots  of  all  that  is 
good  among  the  English-speaking  peoples,  and  indeed,  among 
others,  lead  back  to  German  sources. 

The  doctrine  of  efficiency  has  been  much  preached  of  late 
years,  and  German  example  in  this  respect  has  been  held  up 

6 


for  the  world  to  follow.  We  must  remember,  however,  that 
efficiency,  after  all,  is  a  relative  matter.  Efficiency  is  desirable 
only  if  its  purpose  is  approvable.  Efficiency,  or  perfection  in 
the  performance  of  a  given  act,  is  worth  while  only  if  the  act 
is  worth  while.  To  make  a  thief  efficient  is  not  a  good  thing. 
To  be  an  efficient  liar,  or  robber,  or  murderer  is  not  a  good 
thing.  Now  it  is  true  that  in  industry  and  trade,  in  the  art 
of  war  and  the  machinery  of  education,  as  well  as  in  other 
lines,  the  German  people  in  the  past  two  generations  have 
attained,  in  some  respects,  a  greater  perfection  or  efficiency 
than  most  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  They  have  done  so,  how- 
ever, because  they  have  been  bending  all  their  energies  for  a 
definite  specific  purpose:  preparation  for  war.  Any  people 
could  become  efficient  if  they  devoted  themselves  to  a  par- 
ticular end  for  a  long  enough  time.  The  rest  of  the  world  has 
thought  other  things  better  worth  while.  Moreover,  this  effi- 
ciency about  which  we  talk  so  much  has  proven,  after  all,  a 
broken  reed.  In  less  than  four  years  since  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  the  nations  which  the  German  Government  regarded  as  pe- 
culiarly inefficient  in  military  matters  have  beaten  Germany  at 
her  own  game.  In  the  supply  of  munitions,  in  the  command 
of  the  air,  in  the  command  of  the  sea,  in  the  art  of  trench  mak- 
ing and  keeping,  in  the  number  and  power  of  great  guns,  in 
the  use  of  that  devil's  device,  poisonous  gas,  and  in  nearly 
every  other  respect,  the  military  technique  of  the  Germans 
has  been  attained  and  surpassed  by  the  French  and  British.  In 
the  so-called  chemical  industries,  of  which  it  was  supposed 
that  Germany  had  an  unconquerable  monopoly,  especially  in 
such  matters  as  the  manufacture  of  dyes  and  certain  kinds  of 
glass,  both  the  British  and  we  have  already  put  ourselves  in 
a  position  to  supply  our  ov/n  wants.  In  other  words,  we  have 
not  done  these  things  hitherto,  because  we  had  other  things 
of  more  importance  to  do.  As  soon  as  it  was  necessary  for 
us  to  turn  our  attention  to  these  we  did  them.  There  is  now 
no  dye  of  importance  formerly  imported  from  Germany,  that 
we  are  not  making.  We  have  the  secrets  of  more  kinds  of 
optical  glass  than  Germany  ever  made.  The  same  is  true  in 
other  lines.    The  hollowness  of  the  whole  organization  could 


not  have  been  better  shown  than  by  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  rest  of  the  world  has  adapted  itself  to  the  conditions  forced 
upon  it  by  this  long-conceived  and  slowly-worked-out  plan  for 
military  ascendency. 

For  education,  art,  religion,  industry,  trade,  philosophy, 
public  administration,  all  have  been  directed  to  the  attainment 
of  that  end — the  perfection  of  military  power.  German  mili- 
tary methods  became  the  standard  for  the  armies  of  other  na- 
tions. The  world  watched  and  did  not  understand  that  the 
awful  engine  of  war  was  constructed  for  the  purpose  of  terror- 
izing and  dominating  the  world.  Few  saw  clearly  and  fewer 
still  believed.  But  it  is  evident  now  that  it  was  all  part  of  a 
deliberate  plan  of  preparation  for  a  war  which  it  was  believed 
would  establish  German  supremacy  over  a  beaten,  mutilated, 
murdered  world.  Briefly  put,  the  present  war  was  begun  by 
the  German  Government  in  order  to  effectuate  a  third  in  a 
series  of  steps  planned  since  the  days  of  Bismarck.  The  first 
was  the  accomplishment  of  German  unity ;  the  second  the  cre- 
ation of  the  strongest  military  power  in  Europe ;  the  third,  the 
attainment  of  a  military  position  sufficiently  strong  to  dominate 
the  world.  Men  ask,  and  History  will  ask,  what  claims,  what 
defense,  does  Germany  offer  in  explanation  of  such  a  crime. 

Some  German  public  men  and  writers  claim  that  they  are 
engaged  in  a  war  of  defense,  and  that  the  responsibility  for  the 
present  world  catastrophe  does  not  rest  on  them.  It  is  hardly 
worth  while,  in  view  of  all  the  testimony  and  evidence  that 
have  been  published  on  this  matter,  to  discuss  this  now.  The 
claim  was  not  advanced  until  the  advance  of  the  German  army 
was  checked.  It  may  be  said,  however,  that  there  are  few  in- 
cidents in  history  for  which  the  responsibility  can  be  fixed  as 
definitely  as  can  the  responsibility  for  beginning  this  war. 
Following  Bismarck's  policy,  the  German  Government  had  in 
its  diplomacy  always  tried  to  shape  events  so  that  it  would 
seem  not  to  be  the  aggressor.  This  was  the  case  with  Den- 
mark in  1862.  It  was  the  case  with  Austria  in  1866.  It  was 
the  case  with  France  in  1870,  Bismarck  even  going  so  far  as 
to  falsify  a  telegram  in  order  to  make  his  position  more  plau- 
sible.   So  in  the  present  case.    Germany  accepted  the  murder 

8 


of  the  Austrian  Archduke  as  the  opportunity  for  her  to  strike 
at  her  neighbors  and  enlarge  her  power.  We  know  now  on 
German  testimony  that  a  conference  was  held  as  early  as  July 
5,  1914,  at  which  it  was  decided  that  there  would  be  war.  We 
know  now  as  well  as  we  know  anything,  that  the  German  Gov- 
ernment knew  and  approved  beforehand  the  Austrian  ultima- 
tum to  Serbia.  Germany  knew  that  Russia  was  unprepared  for 
war,  and  that  France  was  not  fully  prepared.  She  knew  that 
Great  Britain  was  wholly  unprepared.  That  she  knew  these 
things  we  know  from  the  testimony  of  her  own  statesmen. 
The  very  diplomatic  statements  made  to  excuse  their  conduct 
in  the  early  days  of  the  war  show  that  they  felt  that  they  must 
strike  both  Russia  and  France  because  Germany  was  ready 
and  they  were  not.  She  herself,  as  somebody  has  remarked, 
was  ready  to  the  last  cannon,  the  last  reservist,  and  the  last 
railroad  car.  In  the  great  mass  of  diplomatic  correspondence 
between  the  middle  of  July  and  the  second  of  August,  1914, 
there  is  not  a  telegram  or  a  communication  of  any  kind  to  show 
that  Germany  made  the  slightest  effort  to  secure  delay  by 
Austria.  In  short,  Germany  not  only  planned  the  war  but 
seized  the  opportune  time  and  planned  the  stroke. 

Some  Americans  apologizing,  before  we  entered  the  war, 
for  Germany's  action,  have  assumed  to  take  the  high  intellec- 
tual ground  that  the  great  conflict,  historically  speaking,  was 
inevitable ;  that  it  is  the  inevitable  result  of  the  clashing  inter- 
ests of  rival  peoples.  True,  the  conflict  was  in  a  sense  inev- 
itable. When  a  criminal  breaks  into  a  man's  house  at  night 
and  is  discovered,  a  conflict  is  inevitable.  When  a  band  of 
pirates  or  robbers  undertakes  to  interfere  with  the  livelihood 
and  orderly,  peaceable  living  of  honest  men,  a  conflict  is  inev- 
itable. If,  therefore,  by  this  statement  it  is  intended  to  say 
that  a  conflict  was  inevitable  because  a  group  of  people  in  one 
part  of  the  world  were  wrongfully  planning  to  attack  another 
group,  the  statement  is  correct.  If,  however,  it  is  intended  to 
mean,  as  undoubtedly  its  sponsors  have  wished  it  to  mean,  that 
the  clashing  "interests"  of  the  aggressor  were  morally  justifi- 
able, or  that  the  aggressors  were  unconscious  of  the  iniquity  of 
their  claims,  or  that  the  so-called  inevitableness  of  the  conflict 

9 


removes  responsibility  for  it  from  the  shoulders  of  those  who 
plotted  it  and  started  it,  the  statement  is  neither  correct  nor 
worthy  of  argument  by  honest  minded  men.  A  conflict  has 
been  inevitable  whenever  in  the  history  of  the  world  brigands, 
robbers  or  wild  beasts  have  attacked  the  peaceful  settlements 
and  homes  of  men  who  were  trying  to  live  their  own  lives  in 
their  own  way.  As  long  as  courage  remains,  conflicts  under 
such  circumstances  will  be  inevitable.  But  there  is  no  room 
in  the  code  of  men  of  honor  for  an  excuse  or  apology  of  this 
kind  set  up  as  a  defense  of  the  most  outrageous  violation  of  the 
laws  of  humanity,  and  the  most  tremendous  transgression  of 
the  principles  of  morality  and  of  national  conduct  that  the 
world  has  ever  seen. 

One  argument  to  justify  themselves,  advanced  by  the  pres- 
ent leaders  of  German  thought,  is  that  might  makes  right ;  that 
therefore  the  German  nation  may  possess  itself  of  the  posses- 
sions of  the  weaker;  and  that  the  moral  law  which  obtains 
among  individuals  does  not  hold  as  between  states,  which  are, 
so  to  speak,  beings  of  a  different  order  of  morality.  We  need 
not  go  far  to  find  evidence  of  the  truth  of  this  statement  from 
the  mouths  of  the  Germans  themselves.  For  example,  we  are 
told  by  the  author  of  Gross-Deutschland,  published  in  1911, 
that:  "in  the  good  old  times  it  happened  that  a  strong  people 
thrust  a  weak  one  out  of  its  ancestral  abode  by  wars  of  exter- 
mination. Today  everything  goes  on  peaceably  on  this 
wretched  earth,  and  it  is  those  who  have  profited  who  are  for 
peace.  The  little  peoples  and  the  remnants  of  a  people  have 
invented  a  new  word — that  is  international  law.  In  reality  it 
is  nothing  else  than  their  reckoning  on  our  good-natured  stu- 
pidity  Room !  they  must  make  room ! Since  we  are 

the  stronger  the  choice  will  not  be  difficult." 

Again  we  are  told,  in  a  volume  published  in  1895,  that: 

"Germans  alone  will  govern They  alone  will  exercise 

political  rights;  however,  they  will  condescend  so  far  as  to 
delegate  inferior  tasks  to  foreign  subjects  who  live  among 
them."  Still  again,  we  are  told :  "Let  no  man  say  every  peo- 
ple has  a  right  to  its  existence,  its  speech,  etc.  With  this 
saying  in  one's  mouth  one  can  easily  appear  civilized,  but  only 

10 


so  long  as  the  respective  peoples  remain  separated  from  one 
another  and  do  not  stand  in  the  way  of  a  mightier  one."  The 
writer  of  this  fine  piece  of  ethics  goes  on  to  say  that  if  people 
are  not  Germanic,  and  they  are  essentially  aliens  to  Germanic 
culture,  the  only  question  is :  Are  they  in  our  way?  "If  they 
are,"  he  says,  "to  spare  them  would  be  folly." 

We  are  told  that  "between  states  regarded  as  intelligent 
beings  disputes  can  be  settled  only  by  force."  This  idea  was 
advanced  by  Lasson  as  early  as  1868.  He  was  one  of  the  pro- 
fessors of  philosophy  at  the  University  of  Berlin,  under  whom, 
doubtless,  many  American  students  have  sat.  He  tells  us,  too, 
in  the  same  volume,  that  the  state  can  realize  itself  only  by  the 
destruction  of  other  states,  which,  logically,  can  be  brought 
about  only  by  violence. 

Of  course,  in  this  conflict  of  states,  the  German  is  always 
the  best.  Professor  Haeckel,  whose  name  was  once  honored 
throughout  the  world,  but  who  has  joined  the  band  of  degraded 
intellectuals  who  have  thrown  morality,  common  sense  and 
honesty  to  the  winds,  tells  us  that  "One  single,  highly  culti- 
vated, German  warrior  of  those  who  are,  alas,  falling  in  thou- 
sands, represents  a  higher  intellectual  and  moral  life  value 
than  hundreds  of  the  raw  children  of  nature  whom  England, 
France,  Russia  and  Italy  oppose  to  them."  The  same  ethics, 
or  lack  of  ethics,  is  shown  in  the  remark  of  Karl  Kuhn,  of 
Charlottenburg,  who  in  philosophical  ecstacy  exclaims :  "Must 
kultur  rear  its  domes  over  mountains  of  corpses,  oceans  of 

tears  and  the  death  rattle  of  the  conquered?     Yes ;  it  must 

The  might  of  the  conqueror  is  the  highest  law  before  which 
the  conquered  must  bow." 

The  state,  we  are  told,  need  pay  no  attention  to  the  moral 
law.  As  long  ago  as  1906  the  German  doctrine  was  expounded 
by  various  writers  from  whom  I  quote,  as  the  right  of  might. 
"By  right  of  war  the  right  of  strange  races  to  migrate  into 
Germanic  settlements  will  be  taken  away.  By  right  of  war  the 
non-Germanic  [population]  in  America  and  Great  Australia 

must  be  settled  in  Africa By  right  of  war  we  can  send 

back  the  useless  South  American  romance  peoples  and  the 
half-breeds  to  North  Africa." 

11 


Again,  we  are  told  that  "There  [in  Livonia  and  Kurland] 
no  other  course  is  open  to  us  but  to  keep  the  subject  race  in  as 
unciviHzed  a  condition  as  possible,  and  thus  prevent  them  from 
becoming  a  danger  to  the  handful  of  their  conquerors." 

In  short,  the  inferior  races,  and  all  races  are  inferior  to  the 
German,  are  to  be  excluded  from  political  life.  Their  individ- 
uality, their  political,  their  lingual  and  their  moral  existence  is 
to  be  crushed. 

At  times  they  have  been  out-spoken  and  frank  concerning 
their  designs  on  other  countries.  Twenty  years  ago,  in  1897, 
one  writer,  Bley,  told  his  compatriots :  "You  cannot  talk  and 
sing  about  an  indefensible  watch  on  the  Rhine  as  long  as  the 
Dutch  and  the  Swiss  do  not  sing  the  same  tune." 

"As  for  Belgium  and  Holland,"  Frymann  told  us  in  1911,^ 
"it  must  be  clear  to  both  that  this  [coming]  war  will  deter- 
mine their  future.  As  matters  in  Europe  have  come  to  a  head 
one  may  freely  avow  that  such  little  states  have  lost  their  right 
to  exist.  For  only  that  state  can  make  a  claim  to  indepen- 
dence which  can  make  it  good,  sword  in  hand."  And  with 
shame  be  it  said,  there  are  Americans  who  have  endorsed  this 
doctrine  by  writing  essays  to  prove  that  Belgium  is  economi- 
cally only  an  appanage  of  Germany  and  should  be  absorbed. 

In  1901  we  were  told  by  another  German  that  "Holland 
must  eventually  be  amalgamated  with  Germany,  as  both  coun- 
tries stand  and  fall  together;  the  same  language,  ideals  and 

ideas  distinguish  both  peoples,  who  must  be  one But 

Germany  is  in  the  position  to  dictate  terms  and  to  force  Hol- 
land economically  to  seek  union  and  absorption."  Still  again, 
a  distinguished  German  economist,  speaking  of  Belgium,  tells 
the  world  that  the  "destinies  of  the  immortal  great  nations 
stand  so  high  that  they  cannot  but  have  the  right,  in  case  of 
need,  to  strike  every  existence  that  cannot  defend  themselves, 
but  support  themselves  shamelessly  upon  the  rivalries  of  the 
great." 

Under  the  policy  of  Bismarck,  as  I  have  said,  German  na- 
tional unity  v/as  achieved  through  the  establishment  of  the 
Empire.  After  that  his  plan  was  to  consolidate  the  various 
German  states,  promote  their  unity  of  interests  and  ideals,  and 

12 


to  live  on  good  terms  with  his  neighbors.  Germany  was  sat- 
isfied with  the  accompHshment  of  her  unity,  and  Bismarck's 
influence  was  largely  and  strongly  thrown  against  extra-terri- 
torial ambitions.  But  when  the  present  Emperor  came  to  the 
throne  and  forced  Bismarck's  retirement,  a  change  gradually 
came  over  the  mind  of  the  German  nation.  As  one  writer, 
Frymann,  put  it  some  years  ago:  "Since  Bismarck  retired 
there  has  been  a  complete  change  of  public  opinion.  It  is  not 
longer  proper  to  say  Germany  is  satisfied.  Our  historical  de- 
velopment and  our  economic  needs  show  that  we  are  once 
more  hungry  for  territory,  and  this  situation  compels  Germany 
to  follow  paths  unforeseen  by  Bismarck." 

The  ambition  of  the  nation  became  the  domination  of  Eu- 
rope, on  the  ground  that  they  needed  more  land  for  their  grow- 
ing population.  They  proceeded  to  argue  that  the  land  of  the 
world  was  practically  all  occupied.  Everywhere  we  go,  they 
tell  us,  we  find  that  the  Englishman  has  been  before  us ;  and, 
they  added,  we  know  that  America  has  begun  the  same  land- 
grabbing  policy,  by  your  seizure  of  the  Philippines,  your  tute- 
lage of  Cuba  and  Central  America.  Therefore,  they  concluded, 
we  must  tear  the  land  from  the  possession  of  those  who  have  it. 
A  simple  illustration  will  make  clear  the  ethics  of  this  wonder- 
ful proposition.  In  this  country,  since  the  adoption  of  the  Con- 
stitution until  now,  there  has  been  abundance  of  land  open 
to  settlement  on  easy  terms,  or  for  nothing.  Hundreds  of 
thousands  of  enterprising  citizens  have  gone  in  and  occupied 
the  land,  so  that  now  our  population  reaches  in  an  unbroken 
stretch  from  ocean  to  ocean.  Now  there  are  no  more  oppor- 
tunities. The  present  generation  and  the  next  and  the  next, 
and  all  succeeding  generations,  will  be  born  only  to  find  the 
land  all  occupied.  They  want  it,  however,  as  ardently  as  you 
wanted,  or  as  your  fathers  or  grandfathers  wanted  it,  when 
they  took  up  the  government  patent  for  the  acres  that  now  are 
yours.  What  shall  we  think  of  a  proposition  that  we  who 
have  come  later  and  find  the  land  all  occupied,  shall  now  drive 
you  off  because  we,  forsooth,  in  our  opinion,  can  make  a  better 
use  of  it?  Yet  this  precisely  is  the  proposition  of  the  German 
Empire. 

13 


It  became,  then,  an  accepted  doctrine  of  German  foreign 
policy,  that  neighboring  small  countries,  Belgium,  Denmark, 
Holland  and  Switzerland  should  become  a  part  of  the  German 
Empire.  Their  lands  were  to  be  seized,  whether  the  people 
were  willing  or  not.  In  addition,  northern  France  was  to  be 
taken  so  as  to  give  the  German  Empire  a  sea  line  running  from 
Havre  to  the  east  end  of  Prussia.  This  perhaps  was  the  first 
form  that  their  thoughts  took, — an  empire  running  therefore 
from  the  western  boundary  of  Russia  south  to  Vienna  and 
west  to  the  Atlantic  ocean. 

For  one  reason  or  another  obstacles  which  they  could  not 
or  dared  not  try  to  surmount  at  the  time  prevented  the  early 
fulfillment  of  this  plan.  But  one  of  the  remarkable  features  of 
German  policy  is  its  elasticity.  It  was  possible  to  accomplish 
the  purpose  of  domination  in  some  other  way.  If  an  empire 
cannot  be  established  reaching  from  the  Gulf  of  Riga  to  the 
Bay  of  Biscay,  one  running  from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Persian 
Gulf,  as  the  world  has  recently  become  aware,  will  serve  the 
purpose  as  well,  —  perhaps  better!  "The  territory  open  to 
future  German  expansion,"  Professor  Hasse  tells  us,  "must 
extend  from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Baltic  and  the  Persian  Gulf, 
absorbing  the  Netherlands,  Luxemburg,  Switzerland,  the 
whole  basin  of  the  Danube,  the  Balkan  Peninsula  and  Asia 
Minor."  So  now  the  phrase  "from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Per- 
sian Gulf"  has  become  the  rallying  cry  of  the  Pan-Germans. 

But  one  thing  was  only  a  stepping-stone  to  another.  If,  in 
the  first  murderous  onrush  of  her  army  in  1914,  Germany  had 
succeeded  in  overrunning  all  of  Belgium,  and  seizing  the  north- 
ern part  of  France  as  far  as  Havre,  or  even  Dieppe,  she  would 
have  been  content  for  a  time.  For  such  an  increase  in  terri- 
tory, if  she  could  keep  it,  would  give  her  the  means  for 
strengthening  her  army  and  navy  for  the  next  onslaught.  For 
rest  assured,  there  is  to  be  a  next  onslaught,  as  I  will 
show  in  another  place,  unless  the  world  succeeds  in  destroying 
German  military  autocracy.  This  territory  would  have  served 
as  a  stepping-stone  for  an  aggression  to  realize  the  dream  of  an 
empire  to  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  that  in  turn  would  have  laid 
the  foundation  for  a  new  grip,  reaching  into  Asia,  for  the  con- 

14 


trol  of  India  and  China.  These  are  avowed  purposes,  as  may 
be  learned  from  the  works  of  many  German  writers.  Failing 
for  the  present  to  accomplish  the  seizure  of  the  Atlantic  lit- 
toral from  Antwerp  west ;  check-mated  in  the  dream  of  "Berlin 
to  Bagdad" ;  thrown  out  of  the  colonial  empire  which  he  pos- 
sessed ;  the  German  militarist  now  turns  for  enlargment  of  the 
Empire  by  the  seizure  of  Poland  and  of  Russia  territory  as  far 
as  the  Gulf  of  Riga.  It  makes  little  difference  where  the  foot- 
hold is,  so  long  as  it  is  a  larger  foothold  that  will  enable  him 
to  prepare  himself  to  deliver  his  next  blow  with  mightier  force. 
"Land,  more  land,"  as  the  cry  is  expressed  by  Maximilian 
Harden,  who  is  now  so  frequently  quoted  by  pacifist  poltroons 
among  our  own  countrymen  who  are  seeking  peace  at  the  ex- 
pense of  principle.  Harden  was  one  of  the  loudest  shriekers 
for  blood  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  when  prospects  seemed 
favorable  to  complete  German  success.  Lately  he  has  been 
advocating  what  he  calls  a  moderate  policy,  holding  up  to  his 
country  the  moderation  of  President  Wilson  and  Lloyd- 
George.  Now  that  he  sees  that  the  purposes  which  he  sup- 
ported cannot  be  attained  he  is  whining  for  the  best  mode  of 
escape. 

But  the  establishment  of  this  European  empire  was  for  the 
purpose  of  furnishing  another  stepping-stone  on  which  to 
stand  and  dictate  to  the  world.  "Germany,"  we  are  told  by 
Pastor  Lehmann,  "is  the  center  of  God's  plans  for  the  world." 
"Germany,"  another  tells  us,  "as  the  preponderant  power  in  a 
Great-German  league  will  with  this  war  attain  world  suprem- 
acy." And  still  again,  Nietzsche,  writing  thirty-three  years 
ago,  tells  us  that  "the  time  for  petty  politics  is  past,  the  next 
century  will  bring  the  struggle  for  the  dominion  of  the  world." 
It  was  in  keeping  with  this  purpose  and  plan  that  the  Kaiser 
declared  some  years  ago  to  his  people:  "Our  future  lies  on 
the  sea";  that  he  and  his  associates  in  government  planned  a 
great  colonial  empire.  As  another  German  professor  tells  us, 
writing  some  years  ago :  "If  we  do  not  soon  acquire  new  ter- 
ritory a  frightful  catastrophe  is  inevitable.  It  signifies  little 
whether  it  be  in  Brazil,  in  Siberia,  in  Anatolia,  or  in  South 
Africa."     Anywhere  in  the  world  they  were  ready  to  seize  the 

15 


best.  They  recognized  no  rights  on  the  part  of  the  existing 
population.  The  fact  that  Germany  wanted  land  gave  her  a 
moral  right  to  take  it  at  the  expense  of  the  property  and  lives 
of  its  present  occupants,  or  of  anybody  else.  "Let  us,"  says 
Karl  Wagner,  "let  us  bravely  organize  great  forced  migrations 

of  the  inferior  peoples The  inefficient  must  be  hemmed 

in  and  at  last  driven  into  reserves  where  they  have  no  room  to 

grow and  where,  discouraged  and  rendered  indifferent 

to  the  future  by  the  spectacle  of  the  superior  energy  of  their 
conquerors,  they  may  crawl  slowly  towards  the  peaceful  death 
of  weary  and  hopeless  senility." 

But  the  dough  must  be  leavened  before  it  can  be  baked. 
Therefore  Germans  must  be  scattered  over  the  world  and 
wherever  possible  brought  together  into  localities  which  will 
develop  a  German  spirit  and  German  point  of  view,  and  secure 
a  dominating  influence  on  the  public  opinion  and  politics  of  the 
country.  Later  on  these  groups  will  serve  admirably  as  cen- 
ters around  which  to  organize  new  colonies  under  the  German 
flag! 

These,  then,  are  the  main  outlines  of  the  plan  of  the  Ger- 
man autocracy  to  bring  the  world  into  subjection.  Can  any 
man  understand  this  plan  and  fail  to  see  that  its  attainment 
would  strike  at  the  roots  of  liberty,  free  government  and  de- 
mocracy everywhere?  The  insidious  influence  and  power  of 
autocracy  would  be  established  in  a  multitude  of  centers  scat- 
tered over  the  globe,  like  the  suckers  on  the  tentacles  of  a 
mighty  devilfish,  whose  body  rested  on  and  drew  its  suste- 
nance and  strength  from  the  main  part  of  the  autocratic  em- 
pire. Sensitive  to  every  touch,  its  body  would  react  to  throw 
its  strength  wherever  there  was  an  opportunity  to  attach  a 
tentacle,  or  a  sucker  on  a  tentacle,  to  a  new  object  that  it  could 
absorb,  and  whose  life  it  could  destroy.  There  would  be  no 
safety  for  a  freedom-loving  people  anywhere  on  the  globe,  be- 
cause these  tentacles  of  influence  and  power  would  be  contin- 
ually reaching  out  and  constantly  growing.  No  nation,  not 
even  our  own,  would  have  been  able  to  stand  up  alone  with  any 
assurance  of  ultimate  success  against  such  a  power.  At  any 
rate,  ultimate  success  by  us  in  such  a  struggle,  when  it  came, 

16 


would  have  had  to  be  attained  at  a  cost  of  life,  form  of  govern- 
ment, and  all  that  democracies  hold  dear,  which  would  have 
made  men  pause  and  ask  whether  the  struggle  were  worth 
while. 

Laying  down  as  their  fundamental  and  unchallengeable 
premise  that  what  the  Germans  want  is  right,  and  that  since 
they  wish  to  expand,  to  seize  other  people's  land  and  dominate 
the  world,  they,  as  the  chosen  people  of  Almighty  God,  have 
a  right  to  do  it;  that  no  such  word  as  "wrong"  can  be  recog- 
nized in  their  vocabulary ;  the  defendants  of  the  monstrous  pro- 
gram of  German  autocracy  make  certain  claims  in  their  own 
defense  and  certain  complaints  which  we  will  proceed  briefly 
to  examine. 

Being  very  scientific,  by  a  perversion  of  reasoning,  they  ar- 
gue that  what  they  call  the  biological  law  of  life,  the  right  of 
the  fittest  to  survive,  confers  upon  the  strong  the  right  to  ex- 
tirpate the  weak.  They  do  not  ask  who  is  fittest  to  survive. 
They  beg  the  question  by  taking  it  for  granted  that  the  only 
being  fit  to  survive  is  the  one  endowed  with  brute  strength. 
They  then  confuse  the  exertion  of  brute  force  with  moral  right. 
In  short,  in  this  matter  they  have  followed  the  custom  which 
runs  through  all  German  political  and  philosophical  as  well  as 
psychological  arguments.  They  first  have  made  up  their 
minds  what  they  want  to  establish,  and  then  they  interpret  the 
data  which  they  have  at  hand  in  such  a  way  as  to  sustain  their 
point.  I  have  read  a  good  deal  of  German  political  and  eco- 
nomic literature  in  the  past  fifteen  years,  and  have  been  im- 
pressed every  time  with  this  fact.  They  prove  what  they  want 
to  prove,  and  show  either  a  real  indifference  to  the  facts,  or  a 
complete  failure  to  realize  that  they  are  not  on  their  side. 

Concerning  the  German  claim  of  their  right  to  expand,  it 
may  be  said,  in  reply,  that  no  country  has  ever  objected  to 
receiving  desirable  members  of  the  fatherland  who  in  years 
past  have  left  her  shores.  No  better  citizens  of  our  own  coun- 
try have  come  from  any  part  of  the  world  than  those  of  Ger- 
man stock.  It  would  have  been  a  great  thing  for  German 
moral  and  educational  influence  to  spread  over  the  civilized 
world  through  the  impress  of  the  character  and  training  of  her 

17 


sons  and  daughters.  But  this  was  not  enough  to  satisfy  the 
autocratic  government  of  the  Empire.  Wherever  a  German 
goes  he  must  still  remain  a  German,  and  retain  his  connections 
with  the  home  government!  The  flag  must  be  established 
and  the  language  spoken  wherever  Germans  go!  The  right 
to  expansion  in  this  sense  is,  of  course,  a  right  that  the  world 
cannot  grant. 

With  reference  to  the  German  claim  that  they  are  waging 
a  war  of  defense  and  not  of  conquest,  it  would  be  laughable  if 
it  were  not  tragic,  to  see  how  they  have  shifted  their  ground. 
The  utterances  of  every  spokesman  of  the  Teutonic  Empire  at 
the  outbreak  of  the  war,  the  literature  of  Germany  for  more 
than  a  generation,  her  state  of  preparedness  to  wage  war,  and 
her  utter  neglect  to  attempt  to  stay  the  beginning  of  war,  are 
all  evidence  that  she  entered  the  conflict  with  a  desire,  and  pur- 
pose, and  intention,  for  conquest.  To  be  sure,  when  she  found 
herself  hemmed  in  and  unable  to  advance  further,  especially 
on  the  western  front  and,  indeed,  on  the  eastern,  until  the  Rus- 
sian collapse,  then  we  find  a  change  of  tone.  Through  the 
utterances  of  her  spokesmen  now  there  runs  the  note  of  that 
whine  which  characterizes  them  in  defeat.  Some  people  "can- 
not stand  the  gaff."    They  lack  the  spirit  of  sport. 

Germany  claims,  as  she  has  claimed  for  a  generation,  that 
she  has  been  forced  to  become  a  military  state,  to  develop  the 
strongest  army  in  the  world  in  self-defense.  "On  the  one 
side,"  she  says,  "we  are  threatened  with  the  eruption  of  the 
barbarian  hordes  of  Russia ;  while  on  the  other  hostile  peoples 
hem  us  in.  We  must  always  be  in  a  position  to  defend  our- 
selves." If  Germany  had  developed  her  military  strength  only 
far  enough  to  enable  her  to  repel  attacks,  the  world  might  take 
this  view  and  sympathize  with  this  argument,  but  she  went 
far  beyond  this.  Of  the  danger  of  the  Russian  bogey  and 
French  revenge,  I  shall  speak  later. 

Again,  Germany  declares  that  one  nation  after  another  has 
blocked  her  program  of  expansion,  has  kept  her  from  finding 
her  "place  in  the  sun."  This  tune  has  been  harped  on  very 
strongly,  especially  with  reference  to  Great  Britain,  largely  for 
consumption  in  this  country.     We  have  been  told  with  an  iter- 

18 


ation  that  has  become  tiresome,  that  Great  Britain  was  trying 
to  prevent  German  commercial  expansion,  and  throttle  German 
trade.  There  is  not  a  scrap  of  proof  in  diplomatic  correspon- 
dence or  political  history  since  Germany  became  an  empire 
that  lays  a  sufficient  warrant  for  such  a  statement.  Great 
Britain  is  and  has  been  a  free-trade  nation.  Her  ports  have 
been  open  to  the  ships  of  all  the  world  on  the  same  terms  as 
to  her  own.  The  ports  of  her  independent  colonies  have  been 
open  to  the  ships  of  all  the  world,  including  those  of  the 
mother-country,  on  the  same  terms.  All  that  the  Germans 
had  to  do  was  to  do  the  service  better  and  cheaper  than  the 
British,  and  they  could  have  the  carrying  trade  of  Canada,  Aus- 
tralia or  Great  Britain  herself.  The  only  possible  ground  for 
taking  any  other  view  is  that  certain  lines  of  British  ships  re- 
ceived high  pay,  which  some  called  subsidies,  in  return  for 
mail  service,  in  order  that  the  government  might  be  at  liberty 
to  take  them  over  as  cruisers  in  event  of  war.  But  these  so- 
called  subsidies  were  for  a  few  passenger  lines  traveling  cer- 
tain routes,  and  had  no  reference  to  the  great  mass  of  British 
shipping.  German  steamship  companies  had  docks  in  various 
parts  of  the  British  Empire,  including  India,  as  well  as  in  the 
British  Isles  themselves.  When,  however,  the  German  com- 
plainants of  alleged  British  monopoly  forgot  themselves,  as 
they  did  once  in  a  while,  they  told  the  world  that  Germany  was 
driving  British  commerce  from  the  seas ;  that  the  world  over 
German  trade  was  driving  out  British.  Now  both  statements 
could  not  be  true.  That  is,  it  could  not  be  true  that  Great 
Britain  was  throttling  German  commercial  expansion  and  at 
the  same  time  that  German  commerce  was  driving  out  British 
all  over  the  world.  The  truth  is  that  neither  statement  was 
correct.  British  trade  during  the  years  when  her  foreign  crit- 
ics and  some  of  her  own  renegade  people  called  her  a  decaying 
nation,  was  advancing  by  leaps  and  bounds,  as  statistics  will 
show.  So  was  that  of  Germany.  And  no  one  welcomed  the 
German  expansion  more  frankly  and  cheerfully  than  did  the 
statesmen  of  Great  Britain.  When  Germany  was  beginning 
her  colonial  program  in  1884,  Mr.  Gladstone  said:  "If  Ger- 
many is  to  become  a  colonizing  power  all  I  can  say  is  God 

19 


speed  her."  And  Mr.  Chamberlain  added:  "If  foreign  na- 
tions are  determined  to  pursue  distant  colonial  enterprises  we 
have  no  right  to  prevent  them."  In  1911  Sir  Edward  Grey 
said  the  same  thing  in  almost  the  same  words.  Similar  state- 
ments are  on  record  from  authoritative  British  statesmen  and 
publicists  with  reference  to  German  commerce. 

No  evidence  has  ever  been  produced  to  show  that  any  one 
or  all  of  these  countries  had  any  designs  upon  the  peaceful  de- 
velopment of  the  German  Empire.  The  Entente  Alliance  be- 
tween Great  Britain,  France  and  Russia  was,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  measure  entered  into  as  a  protection  against  threatened 
German  aggression.  The  policy  of  Germany  was  to  sow  dis- 
sension among  the  other  states  of  Europe,  keeping  them  apart 
while  she  herself  maintained,  through  the  Triple  Alliance,  a 
solid  barrier  of  force  separating  eastern  Europe  from  western. 

In  order  to  create  prejudice  in  her  favor,  German  writers 
have  dwelt  strongly  upon  the  bogey  of  navalism,  and  when 
militarism  has  been  criticised  have  immediately  brought  out 
this  jack-in-the-box  to  make  an  impression.  Unthinking  or 
prejudiced  individuals  among  ourselves,  not  fully  acquainted 
with  the  facts,  have  been  caught  by  the  phrase.  The  world 
has  objected  to  German  militarism  in  the  sense  that  it  was  a 
mighty  military  organization,  created  for  the  purposes  of  ag- 
gression, and  in  ways  that  made  its  use  for  aggression  not  only 
possible  but  almost  certain.  No  such  statement  can  be  made 
of  the  alleged  British  navalism.  Search  the  history  of  the  past 
hundred  years  and  you  will  find  that  the  preponderant  British 
navy  has  been  used  not  for  the  subjugation  of  alien  peoples  and 
the  imposition  of  foreign  law  upon  unwilling  subjects,  but  has 
been  engaged  in  suppressing  piracy,  in  advancing  the  interests 
of  science,  and  in  no  case  has  been  an  aggressor.  Nor  can  a 
great  naval  power  dominate  in  the  same  sense  that  a  great 
military  power  can  do  so.  For  it  has  been  proven  over  and 
over  again,  the  latest  instance  being  the  Gallipoli  campaign, 
that  navies  cannot  overcome  land  defenses  and  military  power. 
But  the  country  which,  with  a  strong  navy,  backed  by  a  mighty 
army,  is  able  to  effect  a  landing,  can  then  use  its  military 
strength  for  subjugation.     The  term  "freedom  of  the  seas" 

20 


has  been  used  to  conjure  with,  and  to  attack  British  policy. 
But  the  seas  have  been  open  and  free,  the  British  navy  to  the 
contrary,  to  the  ships  of  every  nation  for  more  than  a  hundred 
years.  Indeed,  they  have  been  open  because  of  the  British 
navy.  I  have  been  often  puzzled  to  understand  just  what  the 
Germans  meant  by  the  freedom  of  the  seas.  Lately,  however, 
I  have  run  across  the  explanation.  Here  it  is  as  recently  given 
in  one  of  our  newspapers :  "In  March,  1917,  Count  Reventlow 
explained  the  phrase  at  a  great  meeting  in  the  Berlin  Phil- 
harmonic Hall.  On  the  authority  of  the  Naval  and  Military 
Record  of  England  this  bloodthirsty  person  thus  put  himself 
on  record :  'What  does  Germany  understand  by  the  freedom 
of  the  seas?  Of  course  we  do  not  mean  by  it  the  free  use  of 
the  seas,  which  is  the  common  privilege  of  all  nations  in  time 
of  peace,  or  the  right  to  the  open  highways  of  international 
trade.  That  sort  of  freedom  of  the  seas  we  had  before  the  war. 
What  we  understand  today  by  this  doctrine,'  he  continued,  'is 
that  Germany  should  possess  such  maritime  territories  and 
such  naval  bases  that  at  the  outbreak  of  war  we  should  be  able 
with  our  navy  reasonably  ready,  to  guarantee  ourselves  the 
command  of  the  seas.  We  want  such  a  jumping-off  place  for 
our  navy  as  would  give  us  a  fair  chance  of  dominating  the  seas 
and  of  being  free  on  the  seas  during  a  war.' " 

Again,  the  Germans  have  tried  to  create  a  prejudice  against 
Great  Britain  by  harping  upon  the  mightiness  of  the  British 
Empire.  They  have  found  it,  in  their  writings  and  speeches, 
rotten  and  ready  to  fall  apart — because  that  was  what  they 
wanted.  It  was  amusing  to  me  when  I  was  in  Germany  to  see 
the  assurance  with  which  the  Germans  talked  of  misrule  of 
Great  Britain  in  her  colonies,  and  of  the  certainty  with  which 
these  colonies  would  desert  her  in  her  hour  of  trial.  Their 
conversation  and  their  writings  showed  that  they  knew  noth- 
ing at  all  about  the  real  facts  of  the  situation.  They  had  lis- 
tened, as  even  some  in  our  neighborhood  here  had  listened  and 
taken  at  one  hundred  per  cent  value,  the  diatribes  of  a  few  dis- 
contented foreigners.  The  answer  to  the  criticism  that  the 
British  Empire  should  be  broken  up  because  it  was  a  tyranny 
has  been  found  in  the  glorious  response  of  the  Empire  in  this 
war.  21 


As  I  have  already  said,  another  claim  of  the  Germans  in  de- 
fense of  their  program  of  expansion  was  that  Russia  was  a 
menace  to  her.  Slav  barbarism  threatens  to  overwhelm  us, 
they  said.  Our  ignorance  of  real  conditions  in  Russia  made  it 
easy  for  us  to  believe  this.  But  the  claim  could  be  shown  to 
be  in  large  measure  untrue.  Without,  however,  entering  into 
the  merits  of  that  question,  it  is  sufficient  to  point  out  that  on 
this  point  as  on  others  the  German  statements  were  inconsis- 
tent. While  professing  a  fear  of  Slav  domination,  they  con- 
stantly expressed  contempt  for  Russia's  military  strength. 
They  had  no  reason  to  fear  her  if  they  were  not  afraid  of  her 
army. 

At  another  time  it  was  France  that  blocked  the  way  of  this 
chosen  people  of  God  in  their  program  of  robbery  and  murder. 
Therefore,  France  must  be  punished,  and  in  their  phrase  "bled 
white"  beyond  recovery.  I  will  not  insult  your  intelligence 
by  answering  this  claim. 

Finally,  in  order  that  the  world  and  posterity  might  be  sat- 
isfied that  she  was  a  much  abused  and  deeply  wronged  nation 
by  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  Germany  told  us  that  the  United 
States  of  America  has  been  in  recent  years  following  a  policy 
that  blocked  her  way.  "What  do  you  people  want  with  the 
Philippines?"  is  the  question  that  was  frequently  asked  of 
Americans  in  the  days  immediately  following  the  Spanish  war. 
Germany  went  as  far  as  she  dared  during  our  Spanish  war  to 
impede  our  operations,  and  to  secure  the  Philippine  Islands 
for  herself.  She  secured  a  foothold  in  the  Samoan  Islands,  and 
attempted  to  secure  one  in  Venezuela. 

In  short,  in  seeking  to  attain  her  aim  of  world  domination 
Germany  has  planned  to  absorb  her  small  neighbors  and  de- 
stroy the  British  Empire,  to  inculcate  propaganda  favorable  to 
herself  in  every  country  where  her  interests  could  be  subserved 
thereby.  She  has  established  agencies  for  corrupting  and  un- 
dermining public  opinion  in  every  country  of  the  globe  where 
her  plans  could  thereby  be  furthered.  She  has  established 
through  her  emigrants  in  different  countries  groups  strong 
enough  to  dominate  opinion  and  action,  or  to  try  to  set  up  in 
time  a  new  state  under  German  Government,,  as  in  Brazil.     She 

22 


-Tias  used  the  gains  of  every  war  and  every  diplomatic  struggle 
as  the  basis  for  future  aggression.  She  has  permitted  nothing 
to  be  done  in  world  politics  for  twenty  years  without  insisting 
on  having  her  "share,"  whether  she  had  an  interest  in  the  par- 
ticular matter  or  not.  She  shook  her  mailed  fist  at  Morocco 
and  rattled  her  sword  at  Manila.  She  has  insidiously  tried  to 
destroy  the  industrial  and  commercial  plants  of  other  coun- 
tries, and  undermine  their  economic  and  social  organization. 
She  has  stirred  up  internal  dissensions  by  bribery  and  the  dis- 
semination of  falsehoods,  and  has  even  gone  so  far  as  to  stir 
up  foreign  enemies  against  countries  which  supposed  she  was 
their  friend. 

Not  only  has  the  German  autocracy  thrown  the  shadow  of 
its  sinister  designs  across  the  path  of  the  world's  progress,  but 
in  its  immediate  methods  of  carrying  out  its  purposes,  it  has 
crucified  humanity  and  has  violated  every  principle  of  kindli- 
ness and  righteousness.  Under  the  instruction  of  their  mili- 
tary staff,  the  German  army  went  into  Belgium  and  northern 
France  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  so  terrorizing  the  inhabi- 
tants that  the  world  would  be  afraid  to  oppose  the  Germans. 
The  belief  on  their  part  that  such  was  human  nature  not  only 
casts  a  reflection  on  their  good  sense,  but  makes  one  wonder 
whether  they  themselves  are  the  kind  of  people  they  thought 
the  rest  of  us  were.  In  their  conduct  of  the  war  they  have 
defied  and  broken  treaties  and  international  law  whenever  and 
wherever  it  suited  their  purpose,  and  they  stand  today  before 
the  judgment  bar  of  God  and  men  as  a  people  forsworn.  They 
have  violated  every  moral  principle,  in  the  commission  of  rob- 
bery, murder  and  rape.  Neither  age,  sex  nor  condition  has 
been  a  protection  against  their  violence.  Old  men,  women 
and  even  babes  in  arms — it  made  no  difference,  all  must  be 
trampled  in  the  march  of  their  glorious  army.  It  would  have 
been  bad  enough  if  such  conduct  had  gone  only  so  far  as  it 
could  be  defended  reasonably  on  military  grounds,  if  ever  mili- 
tary grounds  require  such  conduct;  but  no  shadow  of  excuse 
that  will  stand  the  test  of  a  moment's  thought  can  be  brought 
forward  that  will  justify  the  treatment  of  Belgium  and  of 
northern  France.     The  evidence  is  abundant  and  unimpeach- 

23 


able.  We  need  not  seek  the  testimony  of  outsiders.  We  need 
rely  only  on  the  private  diaries  of  German  soldiers  and  officers, 
official  proclamations  and  the  photographs  of  the  outraged,  the 
dead  and  the  dying. 

They  have  destroyed  private  property  and  desolated  the 
country  that  they  have  occupied — even  while  prating  about 
the  sacredness  of  private  property  at  sea !  No  one  who  knows 
them  and  their  program  doubts  for  a  moment  that  this  is  done 
in  accordance  with  official  plans  for  the  very  purpose  of  mak- 
ing it  impossible  for  a  desolated  land  to  be  their  competitors  in 
the  future.  "Anybody  who  knows  the  present  state  of  things 
in  Belgian  industry  will  agree  with  me,"  says  Deputy  Beumer 
of  the  Prussian  Diet,  "that  it  must  take  at  least  some  years — 
assuming  that  Belgium  is  independent  at  all — before  Belgium 
can  even  think  of  competing  with  us  in  the  world  market.  And 
anybody  who  has  traveled,  as  I  have  done,  through  the  occu- 
pied districts  of  France,  will  agree  with  me  that  so  much  dam- 
age has  been  done  to  industrial  property  that  no  one  need  be 
a  prophet  in  order  to  say  that  it  will  take  more  than  ten  years 
before  we  need  think  of  France  as  a  competitor  or  of  the  re- 
establishment  of  French  industry."  Here,  then,  we  have  the 
real  motive  of  the  utter  desolation  which  the  Germans  have 
wrought  in  the  occupied  territory. 

Again,  contrary  to  international  law  and  the  custom  of  war, 
for  generations,  they  have  resorted  to  the  practices  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  by  imposing  fines  on  conquered  and  occupied  cities. 

They  have  violated  the  treaties  of  generations,  the  conduct 
of  honorable  soldiers,  the  law  of  nations,  and  the  tenets  of 
modern  civilization  by  seizing  hostages,  making  them  respon- 
sible for  the  acts  of  other  people,  and  murdering  them  to  suit 
their  pleasure. 

They  have  violated  military  law  by  killing  unofficial  civil- 
ians. They  have  violated  military  law,  international  law,  their 
own  specific  pledges,  and  the  law  of  humanity,  by  using  civil- 
ians, including  even  women  and  children,  as  screens  before 
their  advancing  soldiers  in  battle.  They  have  outraged  the 
conscience  of  the  world,  violated  international  agreement  and 
set  civilization  back,  by  restoring  slavery  through  the  deporta- 

24 


tion  of  defenseless  inhabitants  of  conquered  territory,  tearing 
them  from  their  families  and  transporting  them  to  work  in  Ger- 
many or  elsewhere. 

Through  their  piratical  submarine  attacks  they  have  vio- 
lated international  law,  restored  piracy  and  committed  murder, 
even  of  neutrals  on  peaceful  ships,  innocent  travelers, — men, 
women,  girls,  boys  and  babes  in  arms. 

They  have  gone  back  to  the  war  practices  of  five  centuries 
ago  by  their  cowardly  use  of  poison  gases  that  inflict  the  most 
awful  tortures,  so  that  their  opponents  are  more  than  justified 
in  the  moderate  criticism  which  they  have  made,  that  the  Ger- 
mans are  "not  clean  fighters." 

They  have  been  guilty  of  inhumanity  and  violating  law  by 
killing  the  wounded,  by  attacking  hospitals  and  Red  Cross  am- 
bulances, and  by  attacking  undefended  cities.  They  have 
placed  themselves  in  the  same  class  with  the  fanatical  Turks, 
by  condoning  the  massacre  of  Armenians.  Do  you  doubt  the 
truth  of  these  statements?  Out  of  their  own  mouths  again, 
judge  them. 

I  give  a  single  instance  out  of  many  in  each  case.  As  to 
robbery :  "After  living  about  a  week  in  a  chateau  near  Liege, 
His  Royal  Highness,  Prince  Eitel  Fritz,  the  Duke  of  Bruns- 
wick, and  another  nobleman  of  less  importance,  had  all  the 
dresses  that  could  be  found  in  the  wardrobes  belonging  to  the 
lady  of  the  house  and  her  daughters  packed  before  their  own 
eyes  and  sent  to  Germany." 

As  to  incendiarism :  "The  village  was  surrounded  and  the 
soldiers  posted  one  yard  apart  so  that  no  one  could  escape. 
Then  the  Uhlans  set  fire  to  the  place  one  house  after  another. 
No  man,  woman  or  child  could  possibly  escape.  Any  one  try- 
ing to  escape  was  shot." 

As  to  murder,  here  is  one  case:  "All  the  villagers  fled. 
The  dead  were  all  buried,  numbering  60.     Among  them  were 

many  old  men  and  women Three  children  were  clasped 

in  each  others  arms  and  had  died  thus." 

As  to  outrages  on  women  and  children,  I  dare  not  quote. 

As  to  killing  the  wounded,  I  need  but  recall  the  order  of 
General  Stenger :  "No  prisoners  are  to  be  taken.  All  prison- 
ers, whether  wounded  or  not,  must  be  slaughtered." 

25 


As  to  sheltering  themselves  behind  women  and  others  im 
battle,  hear  Lieut.  Eberlein:     "I  made  them  sit  on  chairs  in 

the  middle  of  the  street The  civilians  whom  they  had. 

put  in  the  same  way  in  the  middle  of  the  street  were  killed  by 
French  bullets.     I  saw  their  dead  bodies." 

As  to  killing  prisoners,  I  have  already  quoted  General 
Stenger. 

As  to  being  liars  about  their  conduct,  I  need  not  quote. 
Read  almost  any  statement  of  their  military  chiefs  or  of  any 
pro-German. 

As  to  the  deportation  of  civilians,  and  the  restoration  of 
slavery  on  a  scale  unparalleled  since  the  days  of  the  Calmuck 
Tartars,  read  the  statements  of  your  own  Ambassador  Gerard 
and  other  Americans  who  were  on  the  ground. 

Then  as  to  the  general  character  of  their  procedure  in  the 
conduct  of  the  war,  listen  to  the  testimony  of  one  of  our  own 
distinguished  fellow-citizens,  Mr.  F.  C.  Walcott,  one  of  Mr.. 
Hoover's  staff  in  Belgium. 

A  year  ago  I  went  to  Poland  to  learn  its  facts  con- 
cerning the  remnant  of  a  people  that  had  been  deci- 
mated by  war.  The  country  had  been  twice  devas- 
tated. First  the  Russian  army  swept  through  it  and 
then  the  Germans.  Along  the  roadside  from  Warsaw 
to  Pinsk,  the  present  firing  line  230  miles,  near  half  a 
million  people  had  died  of  hunger  and  cold.  The  way 
was  strewn  with  their  bones  picked  clean  by  the 
crows.  With  their  usual  thrift,  the  Germans  were 
collecting  the  larger  bones  to  be  milled  into  fertilizer, 
but  finger  and  toe  bones  lay  on  the  ground  with  the 
mud  covered  and  rain  soaked  clothing. 

Wicker  baskets  were  scattered  along  the  way — 
the  basket  in  which  the  baby  swings  from  the  rafters 
in  every  peasant  home.  Every  mile  there  were  scores 
of  them,  each  one  telling  a  death.  I  started  to  count, 
but  after  a  little  I  had  to  give  it  up,  there  were  so 
many. 

That  is  the  desolation  one  saw  along  the  great 
road  from  Warsaw  to  Pinsk,  mile  after  mile,  more 
than  two  hundred  miles.  They  told  me  a  million 
people  were  made  homeless  in  six  weeks  of  the  Ger- 

26 


man  drive  in  August  and  September,  1916.  They 
told  me  four  hundred  thousand  died  on  the  way 

In  the  refugee  camps,  300,000  survivors  of  the 
flight  were  gathered  by  the  Germans,  members  of 
broken  families.  They  were  lodged  in  jerry-built 
barracks,  scarcely  water-proof,  unlighted,  unwarmed 
in  the  dead  of  winter.  Their  clothes,  where  the  but- 
tons were  lost,  were  sewed  on.  There  were  no  con- 
veniences, they  had  not  even  been  able  to  wash  for 
weeks.  Filth  and  infection  from  vermin  were  spread- 
ing.   They  were  famished,  their  daily  ration  a  cup  of 

soup  and  a  piece  of  bread  as  big  as  my  fist 

In  that  situation,  the  German  commander 

issued  a  proclamation.  Every  able-bodied  Pole  was 
bidden  to  Germany  to  work.  If  any  refused,  let  no 
other  Pole  give  him  to  eat,  not  so  much  as  a  mouthful, 
under  penalty  of  German  military  law. 

This  is  the  choice  the  German  Government  gives 
to  the  conquered  Pole,  to  the  husband  and  father  of  a 
starving  family :  Leave  your  family  to  die  or  survive 
as  the  case  may  be.  Leave  your  country  which  is  de- 
stroyed, to  work  in  Germany  for  its  further  destruc- 
tion. If  you  are  obstinate,  we  shall  see  that  you  surely 
starve. 

Staying  with  his  folk,  he  is  doomed  and  they  are 
not  saved ;  the  father  and  husband  can  do  nothing  for 
them,  he  only  adds  to  their  risk  and  suffering.  Leav- 
ing them,  he  will  be  cut  off  from  his  family,  they  may 
never  hear  from  him  again  nor  he  from  them.  Ger- 
many will  set  him  to  work  that  a  German  workman 
may  be  released  to  fight  against  his  own  land  and  peo- 
ple. He  shall  be  lodged  in  barracks,  behind  barbed 
wire  entanglements,  under  armed  guard.  He  shall  be 
scantily  fed  and  his  earnings  shall  be  taken  from  him 
to  pay  for  his  food. 

That  is  the  choice  which  the  German  Government 
offers  to  a  proud,  sensitive,  high-strung  people.  Death 
or  slavery. 

When  a  Pole  gave  me  that  proclamation,  I  was 
boiling.  But  I  had  to  restrain  myself.  I  was  prac- 
tically the  only  foreign  civilian  in  the  country  and  I 
wanted  to  get  food  to  the  people.  That  was  what  I 
was  there  for  and  I  must  not  for  any  cause  jeopardize 

27 


the   undertaking.      I   asked    Governor    General   von 
Beseler,  "Can  this  be  true?" 

"Really,  I  cannot  say,"  he  replied,  "I  have  signed 
so  many  proclamations ;  ask  General  von  Kries." 

So  I  asked  General  von  Kries.  "General,  this  is  a 
civilized  people.    Can  this  be  true?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "it  is  true" — with  an  air  of  adding. 
Why  not? 

I  dared  not  trust  myself  to  speak ;  I  turned  to  go. 
"Wait,"  he  said.  And  he  explained  to  me  how  Ger- 
many, official  Germany,  regards  the  state  of  subject 
peoples. 

This,  then,  men  and  women  of  America,  is,  so  far,  the  story. 
Let  us  turn  back,  quietly  still,  and  read  a  little  history. 

The  writings  of  many  Germans  make  it  clear  that  the  an- 
ticipated success  in  the  present  war  was  to  be  a  basis  for  future 
action  against  ourselves.  Sixteen  years  ago  a  professor  of 
history  in  the  Royal  Academy  in  Posen  and  the  Academy 
in  Berlin,  Dr.  Hotsch,  wrote:  "The  most  dangerous  foe  of 
Germany  in  this  generation  will  prove  to  be  the  United 
States."  Lieut.  Edelscheim  wrote,  in  1901 :  "Operations  against 
the  United  States  of  North  America  must  be  entirely  different. 
With  that  country  in  particular  political  friction  manifest  in 
commercial  aims  has  not  been  lacking  in  recent  years,  and  has 
until  now  been  removed  chiefly  through  acquiescence  on  our 
part.  However,  as  this  submission  has  its  limit,  the  question 
arises  as  to  what  means  we  can  develop  to  carry  out  our  pur- 
pose with  force  in  order  to  combat  the  encroachments  of  the 
United  States  upon  our  interests If  the  German  invad- 
ing force  were  equipped  and  ready  for  transporting  the  mo- 
ment the  battle  fleet  is  dispatched  under  average  conditions, 
these  corps  can  begin  operations  on  American  soil  within  at 

least  four  weeks The  United  States  at  this  time  is  not 

in  a  position  to  oppose  our  troops  with  an  army  of  equal  rank. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Germany  is  the  only  great  power 

which  is  in  a  position  to  conquer  the  United  States." 

Still  another  writer,  in  1897,  expressed  the  opinion  that 
"the  Monroe  doctrine  lacks  as  yet  a  justification  in  the  unified 

28 


character  of  the  people" !  Still  another  tells  us :  "It  is  there- 
fore the  duty  of  every  one  who  loves  languages  to  see  that  the 
future  language  spoken  in  America  shall  be  German." 

In  1903  Vollert  wrote :     "From  all  this  it  appears  that  the 

Monroe  doctrine  cannot  be  justified And  so  it  remains 

only  what  we  Europeans  almost  universally  consider  it,  an 
impertinence."  So  distinguished  an  authority  as  the  econo- 
mist Schmoller  wrote  some  years  ago :  "We  most  desire  that 
at  any  cost  a  German  country  containing  some  20  or  30  million 

Germans  may  grow  up  in  the  coming  century  in  Brazil 

Unless  our  connection  with  Brazil  is  always  secured  by  ships 
of  war,  and  unless  Germany  is  able  to  exercise  pressure  there 
our  development  is  threatened." 

Another  professor  of  political  economy  (Schulze-Gaever- 
nitz)  wrote  in  1898:  "The  more  Germany  is  condemned  to 
an  attitude  of  peaceful  resistance  toward  the  United  States, 
the  more  emphatically  must  she  defend  her  interests  in  Central 
and  South  America  where  she  today  occupies  an  authoritative 

position For  this  purpose  we  need  a  fleet  capable  not 

only  of  coping  with  the  miserable  forces  of  South  American 
states  but  powerful  enough  if  the  need  should  arise  to  cause 
Americans  to  think  twice  before  making  any  attempt  to  apply 
an  economic  Monroe  doctrine  in  South  America.  Still  again, 
we  are  told  by  another  that  it  depends  on  the  political  situation 
when  Germany  shall  take  possession  of  a  harbor  in  Venezuela. 
Before  doing  so,  however,  this  writer  tells  his  fellow-country- 
men that  they  should  determine  first  whether  they  are  to  ac- 
quiesce in  the  American  order  of  "hands  off  in  South  America." 

In  1904  Friedrich  Lange  asserted  that  all  the  republics  of 
South  America  would  accept  the  advice  of  the  German  Govern- 
ment and  listen  to  reason,  either  voluntarily  or  under  coercion, 
while  two  years  later  another  wrote  that  not  only  North  Amer- 
ica but  the  whole  of  America  must  become  perhaps  the  strong- 
est fortress  of  the  Germanic  races.  This  is  one  of  the  writers 
who  advocated  the  sending  of  people  of  non-Germanic  blood 
now  living  in  South  America  to  Africa  so  as  to  have  "a  free 
South  America  for  those  of  Germanic  blood."  This  was  twelve 
years  ago.     At  about  the  same  time  another  aspirant  for  his 

29 


country's  expansion  told  the  world  that  Germany  would  take 
under  her  protection  the  republics  of  Argentina,  Chile,  Uru- 
guay and  Paraguay,  and  other  parts  of  South  America  where 
Germans  had  settled  predominantly. 

Still  again,  in  1915,  Professor  Hettner  of  Heidelberg  told 
his  countrymen  that  in  treating  with  America  German  public 
opinion  was  to  some  extent  lacking  in  courage.  "J^st  because 
the  United  States  has  set  up  the  Monroe  doctrine  to  exclude 
Europeans  from  America  it  does  not  follow  that  we  should 
acquiesce  in  that  doctrine." 

Throwing  a  flood  of  light  on  the  opinions  which  I  have 
quoted  concerning  the  attitude  of  Germany  towards  the  United 
States,  is  the  story  told  by  Major  N.  A.  Bailey  and  published 
in  the  New  York  Tribune,  August  11,  1915.  It  is  as  follows: 
"At  the  close  of  the  Spanish-American  War,  I  was  returning 
on  the  Santee — I  think  it  was — from  Santiago,  Cuba,  to  Mon- 

tauk  Point On  board  there  was  a  military  attache  from 

Germany,  Count  von  Goetzen,  a  personal  friend  of  the  Kaiser. 
Apropos  of  a  discussion  between  Count  von  Goetzen  and  my- 
self on  the  friction  between  Admiral  Dewey  and  the  German 
Admiral  at  Manila,  von  Goetzen  said  to  me:  'About  15  years 
from  now  my  country  will  start  her  great  war.  She  will  be  in 
Paris  in  about  two  months  after  the  commencement  of  hostil- 
ities. Her  move  on  Paris  will  be  but  a  step  to  her  real  object 
— the  crushing  of  England.  Everything  will  move  like  clock- 
work. We  will  be  prepared  and  others  will  not  be  prepared. 
I  speak  of  this  because  of  the  connection  which  it  will  have 
with  your  own  country.  Some  months  after  we  finish  our 
work  in  Europe  we  will  take  New  York  and  probably  Wash- 
ington and  hold  them  for  some  time.  We  will  put  your  coun- 
try in  its  place  with  reference  to  Germany.  We  do  not  pur- 
pose to  take  any  of  your  territory,  but  we  do  intend  to  take  a 
billion  or  more  dollars  from  New  York  and  other  places.  The 
Monroe  doctrine  will  be  taken  charge  of  by  us,  as  we  will 
then  have  put  you  in  your  place,  and  we  will  take  charge  of 
South  America,  as  far  as  we  want  to.' " 

Finally,  we  have  to  bear  in  mind  the  remark  of  the  gentle- 
man who  has  several  times  proclaimed  that  he  took  his  stand 

30 


beside  his  allies  in  shining  armor,  the  Emperor  himself.  Am- 
bassador Gerard  tells  us  that  in  conversation  with  him  the 
Emperor  repeatedly  said :  "America  had  better  look  out  after 
this  war,"  and  "I  shall  stand  no  nonsense  from  America  after 
the  War." 

The  sentiments  that  have  been  described  above  have  come 
to  the  surface  on  several  occasions  in  the  history  of  the  past 
two  decades.  The  story  of  the  attitude  and  interference  of  the 
German  Admiral  Diedrichs  with  the  operations  of  Admiral 
Dewey  and  his  attempt,  without  success,  to  persuade  the  Brit- 
ish Admiral  to  take  the  same  view,  are  well  known.  Yet 
Chancellor  von  Bulow,  speaking  in  the  Reichstag  in  1899  evi- 
dently approved  the  truculent  attitude  of  his  Admiral.  He 
said  among  other  things,  that  the  need  of  Germany  for  coaling 
stations  was  most  clearly  indicated  at  the  time  of  the  Spanish- 
American  war,  and  that  the  introduction  in  the  Reichstag  of  a 
bill  for  the  increase  of  the  German  navy  was  justified  by  the 
occurrences  of  the  Spanish-American  war,  the  disturbances  in 
Samoa  and  the  war  in  South  Africa. 

In  connection  with  the  Spanish  war,  not  only  did  the  Ger- 
man Admiral  by  his  actions  show  contempt  for  the  American 
fleet,  but  he  gave  indirect  aid  to  our  enemy ;  he  interfered  as  far 
as  he  dared  in  an  obstructive  way  in  the  operations  of  Dewey's 
fleet,  and  tried  the  patience  of  our  Admiral  almost  to  the  break- 
ing point.  Later  on  the  same  commander  in  the  same  cruiser, 
the  Panther,  slipped  into  a  harbor  of  Venezuela  and  en- 
deavored to  get  a  foothold  there.  German  influence  has  been 
thrown  against  the  construction  and  the  control  of  the  Panama 
Canal  by  ourselves  and  against  the  purchase  by  us  of  the 
Danish  West  India  Islands. 

In  spite  of  this  fearful  indictment,  in  spite  of  this  long  series 
of  truculent  acts  against  every  people  in  the  world  who  were 
imagined  by  German  leaders  to  stand  in  their  way,  we  still 
find  some  of  our  people  asking  why  we  went  into  the  war !  We 
went  in  for  a  variety  of  reasons. 

In  the  first  place,  we  were  called  on  as  one  of  the  leaders 
of  humanity  to  take  a  stand  in  defense  of  civilization,  right- 
eousness and  law.    When  our  forefathers  published  the  Decla- 

31 


ration  of  Independence  they  said  that  among  other  reasons  for 
issuing  their  statement  was  a  decent  respect  for  the  opinions 
of  mankind.  No  such  respect  has  been  shown  by  the  German 
Government  in  this  war,  or  the  incidents  that  preceded  it.  Has 
a  man  no  duty  when  he  sees  his  neighbor  beaten,  robbed  or 
murdered?  Has  a  people,  a  country,  a  nation  no  duty  to  act 
when  it  sees  the  principles  for  which  it  stands  trampled  to  the 
earth;  and  its  neighbors  maltreated,  robbed  and  murdered? 
Has  a  nation  no  duty,  nay,  has  a  nation  no  interest  to  protect, 
when  it  sees  principles  and  practices  antagonistic  to  its  own  ex- 
istence established  in  a  neighboring  community?  The  answer 
is  given  in  our  own  Declaration  of  Independence  when  the 
writers  said  that  one  of  the  causes  for  rebelling  was  the 
attempt  of  the  king  of  Great  Britain  to  establish  in  a  neighbor- 
ing province  a  government  that  would  be  inimical  to  our  own. 
Every  principle  and  precept  of  humanity,  the  duty  to  defend 
righteousness  and  law  among  nations,  every  interest  involved 
in  the  maintenance  of  our  own  democratic  form  of  govern- 
ment, called  us  to  join  in  this  war. 

Again,  were  we  to  stand  apart  when  the  moral  sense  of  the 
world  was  outraged  by  the  murder  and  oppression  of  the  peo- 
ple of  Belgium  and  northern  France?  What  defense  can  a 
man  or  a  nation  offer  if  he  stands  passive  and  silently  acquies- 
ces in  such  deeds  as  the  massacre  of  the  Armenians,  the  Ser- 
bians and  the  Poles,  and  the  enslavement  of  the  Belgians?  Is 
it  worthy  of  a  free  people  to  refuse  to  resent  such  things  as  the 
murder  of  Edith  Cavell,  or  Captain  Fryatt,  or  the  innocent 
travelers  on  the  Lusitania? 

We  said  we  went  to  war  with  Spain  to  free  the  people  of 
Cuba  from  tyranny  and  misery  and  give  them  an  opportunity 
to  live  as  freemen.  That  is  a  humanitarian  motive.  Did  we 
lie?  If  we  did  not,  then  such  a  motive  justifies  our  entry  into 
this  war. 

But  there  are  more  important  reasons  for  our  intervention. 
Our  pride  and  national  dignity  have  been  insulted  by  the 
system  of  propaganda  which  has  undertaken  to  corrupt  and 
undermine  our  public  opinion,  to  falsify  and  to  destroy  our 
political  and  moral  ideals,  to  interfere  with  our  industry  and 

32 


trade  by  the  destruction,  at  the  risk  of  life,  of  industrial  and 
other  establishments.  As  a  far-seeing  people  we  are  called 
on  to  interpose  ourselves  to  prevent  the  growth  of  an  auto- 
cratic government  to  a  point  of  strength  where  at  its  leisure 
and  pleasure  it  can  defy  that  Monroe  doctrine  which  we  have 
regarded  as  one  of  the  greatest  safeguards  of  liberty  in  the 
western  hemisphere. 

But  even  more  specifically :  We  were  insultingly  told  that 
we  must  not  sell  munitions  of  war.  Apparently  it  was  the  high 
prerogative  of  the  German  nation  to  do  this  to  any  belligerent, 
but  we  might  not  do  it  if  it  injured  or  even  displeased  the 
German  autocracy.  We  patiently  pleaded  our  cause,  showing 
the  reasons  for  our  action.  The  German  Government  tried  to 
stir  up  internal  sentiment  against  us.  She  then  issued  her 
edicts  about  shipping.  We  protested  against  attacks  on  neutral 
ships  by  submarines  and  particularly  against  the  sinking  of 
neutral  vessels  or  of  any  vessel  in  ways  contrary  to  maritime 
international  law  endangering  the  lives  of  the  crew  and  pas- 
sengers. Pretending  to  acquiesce,  the  German  Government 
waited  for  an  opportune  time,  when  she  had  increased  the 
number  of  her  submarines,  and  then  defied  the  request  and  the 
wish  of  the  United  States.  She  sent  to  an  untimely  death  inno- 
cent children  and  women  as  well  as  men,  and  in  too  many 
instances  her  submarine  commanders  sank  vessels  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  it  almost  impossible  for  passengers  or  crew 
to  survive.  "Sink  them  so  that  not  a  trace  will  be  left  behind" 
seems  to  have  been  the  order  of  other  representatives  of  the 
German  Government  than  the  fool  who  spoke  for  it  in  Buenos 
Aires.  "Public  policy  prompted  by  the  emotions  is  stupidity. 
Humanitarian  dreams  are  imbecility.  Diplomatic  charity  be- 
gins at  home.  Statesmanship  is  business.  Right  and  wrong 
are  notions  indispensable  in  private  life.  The  German  people 
are  always  right  because  they  number  87,000,000  souls." 

But  why  prolong  the  horrible  story?  If  in  the  face  of  the 
evidence  easily  accessible  to  all,  and  only  part  of  which  I  have 
touched  upon,  there  is  any  one  among  us  who  still  is  in  doubt 
about  the  wisdom  and  necessity  of  our  entering  the  war,  then 
he  would  not  listen  if  the  country  were  covered  with  the  in- 

33 


vaders  and  we  were  experiencing  the  same  ruthlessness  that 
has  befallen  the  people  of  Belgium,  Serbia,  Poland,  Armenia 
and  France.  If  any  one  now  does  not  believe  that  it  has  been 
the  set  purpose  of  the  imperial  German  Government  to  domi- 
nate the  earth,  to  destroy  democracy  and  establish  autocracy, 
then  he  too  must  be  one  of  those  87  million  German  people 
who  are  always  right  because  they  are  German. 

Therefore,  fellow-citizens,  in  going  to  Europe  to  fight  side 
by  side  with  glorious  Britain,  heroic  France  and  courageous 
Italy,  we  are  simply  defending  our  own  shores,  our  own  lives, 
our  own  families.  For  it  is  as  clear  as  the  sunlight  that  if 
German  autocracy  succeeds  in  establishing  its  aims  on  the  con- 
tinent of  Europe,  the  Republic  of  America  will  be  the  next 
victim.  And  if  we  had  not  undertaken  to  stem  the  rising  tide 
of  slavery  and  terror  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  we  would 
have  found  it  necessary  to  do  it  on  this  side  alone.  It  would 
not  have  been  only  the  burning  of  New  York,  or  Boston,  or 
Washington,  or  Charleston ;  it  would  not  have  been  only  the 
imposition  of  fines  and  indemnities  of  billions  of  dollars;  it 
would  not  have  meant  merely  the  destruction  of  our  property 
and  the  robbery  of  our  sustenance ;  it  would  have  meant  the 
dishonor  or  the  death,  or  both,  of  those  who  are  dear  to  us; 
it  would  have  meant  the  destruction  of  that  great  national 
spirit  and  national  organization  which  has  been  established 
and  cemented  by  the  blood  of  our  fathers ;  it  would  have  meant 
the  turning  back  of  the  liberty  of  the  individual  and  the  world 
to  the  conditions  of  five  centuries  ago ;  it  would  have  meant  the 
blotting  out  of  that  spirit  of  freedom,  that  spirit  of  indepen- 
dence, that  spirit  of  duty,  that  spirit  of  high  idealism,  which 
we  like  to  characterize  as  American ;  it  would  have  meant  that 
instead  of  America's  being,  as  she  always  has  been,  the  hope 
of  the  world,  she  would  take  her  place  among  the  beaten  and 
degraded  and  enslaved  nations  under  the  heel  of  an  emperor 
who  claims  to  represent  God,  and  whose  shining  armor,  no 
longer  shining,  but  begrimed  with  the  blood  of  the  innocent 
and  the  weak,  is  still  waving  his  sword  in  defiance  of  law  and 
order  and  right. 


84 


Think  about  these  things.  Go  home,  look  at  your  barns, 
and  remember  that  if  "This  Thing"  comes  to  our  shores  it  will 
be  well  for  you  to  burn  them  before  the  invader  does.  Look  at 
your  crops  and  your  trees.  If  he  reaches  our  shores  cut  them 
down  and  burn  them.  It  will  be  better  to  do  that  than  to  let 
them  fall  into  his  hands.  Look  at  your  wife  and  your  daugh- 
ters, and  be  ready  to  follow  the  example  of  Virginius,  in  an- 
cient Rome.  For  it  were  better  that  they  were  dead.  Think 
of  the  liberty  you  have  enjoyed,  and  choose  to  lie  dead  rather 
than  give  it  up.  Think  of  the  country  of  which  you  are  a  part 
and  which  your  fathers  and  yourself  have  helped  to  build  up, 
and  make  up  your  mind  to  lay  it  desolate  in  universal  ruin 
according  to  your  own  way,  because  if  you  do  not  and  are 
beaten  it  will  be  done  in  the  invader's  way. 

To  prevent  these  things  is  our  task.  "To  such  a  task,"  in 
the  words  of  our  great  President,  "we  can  dedicate  our  lives 
and  our  fortunes,  everything  that  we  are,  and  everything 
that  we  have,  with  the  pride  of  those  who  know  that  the  day 
has  come  when  America  is  privileged  to  spend  her  blood  and 
her  might  for  the  principles  that  gave  her  birth  and  happiness 
and  the  peace  which  she  has  treasured.  God  helping  her,  she 
can  do  no  other." 

I  see  a  vision!  "I  see  a  drumhead  court-martial. ^  I  see  an 
English  woman,  tall,  sweet-faced  and  pale.     I  see  her  calm 

under  the  lash  of  words  of  torment I  see  her  led  away. 

I  see  her  blindfolded  as  six  men  with  rifles  step  away. 

I  see  the  garments  torn,  exposing  her  left  breast  so  that  they 
will  need  no  other  white  mark  to  reach  her  heart.  I  hear  a 
command.  I  hear  a  report.  A  form  crumples  into  a  grave,  and 
a  soul  takes  flight  to  the  God  that  gave  it." 

But  wait.  My  eye  turns  back  to  our  own  land.  A  mes- 
senger boy  with  a  thin  yellow  envelope  in  his  hand  has  just 
entered  a  quiet  cottage  in  central  Illinois.  The  messenger 
leaves.  The  father  and  mother  sit  alone  dry  eyed  and  still. 
By  and  by  the  woman,  rising,  goes  to  her  husband  and  taking 
one  lapel  of  his  coat  in  each  hand  she  shakes  him  fiercely,  and 


^From  "The  Cross  of  Gold,"  by  C.  F.  Johnson,  Twin  Falls,  Idaho. 

35 


says :  "John,  they  have  killed  my  boy  in  France,  and  I  want 
you  to  DO  SOMETHING."  So  when  500,000  more  or  less 
are  murdered  in  France,  and  parents  begin  to  go  all  over  the 
nation  saying  "They  have  killed  my  boy  in  France,  won't  you, 
and  you,  and  you,  do  something?"  we  will  plow,  and  dig,  and 
mine,  and  nail,  and  work,  and  think,  and  pray  and  fight.  And 
still  the  call  will  ring  in  our  ears :  They've  killed  my  boy  in 
France;  won't  you  do  something?  and,  by  the  Eternal  God, 
we  will! 


